Featured Image

Podcast

June 03, 2010

At the First Battle of Manassas in July 1861, the unrelenting vigor with which Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson held his position inspired a general nearby to rally his troops with the cry, "There is Jackson standing like a stone wall." From that moment on, he was known as "Stonewall" Jackson, a name that he repeatedly lived up to, fighting under the command of General Robert E. Lee.

The deeply religious Jackson believed intensely in the righteousness of the southern cause, and a key to his success was his ability to instill his own fighting fervor in his men. One of his most brilliant victories came at Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863. Tragically for Jackson and the South, this would prove to be his last battle, as he died of wounds accidentally inflicted by his own men.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is tonight (Thursday, June 3), when curator Anne Goodyear speaks about artist Jim Torok's work, on view in "Portraiture Now: Communities." The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

May 28, 2010

Elvis Presley’s humble nature and patriotism appealed greatly to visionary artist Howard Finster. Born in 1915 in DeKalb County, Alabama, Finster claimed to have his first vision in early childhood; his later visions would dictate decisions affecting both his life and his art. Finster was an evangelical Baptist minister before coming to view painting as the vehicle chosen for him to spread the gospel.

Included in the current NPG “Echoes of Elvis” exhibition are two of Finster’s painted, wood-cutout Elvis images: Elvis at Three (below) and Elvis in Army Uniform (above), both done in 1990 and from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Elvis at Three, which features a baby Elvis Presley adorned with angel wings and inscribed with Bible verses, conjures Finster’s idea of Elvis as a special Christian emissary on earth. Elvis in Army Uniform presents a more secular image of Presley with a reference to his military service.

Elvis’s military service could not have come at a more inconvenient moment from a career perspective. On July 8, 1954, Elvis’s single “That’s All Right, Mama,” was first played on Memphis radio. Within two years, Elvis was nationally known and had a number of gold records. By 1958, he had also become box-office gold, and his career seemed boundless. He ascent was put on hiatus, however, as he complied with his government draft notice. Elvis entered in the United States army in 1958, served for two years, and was honorably discharged in 1960.

Listen to Warren Perry's Face-to-Face talk on Elvis in the army (27:55)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is Thursday, June 3, when curator Anne Goodyear speaks about artist Jim Torok's work, on view in "Portraiture Now: Communities." The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Elvis in army uniform / Howard Finster (1916–2001) / Paint on wood, 1991 / High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; purchase with funds from the Cousins Foundation, Inc., and donors to the Paradise Project

Campaign
Elvis at Three / Howard Finster (1916–2001) / Paint and ink on wood, 1990 / High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; purchase with funds from the Cousins Foundation, Inc., and donors to the Paradise Project Campaign

April 28, 2010

Red Grooms, like fellow Tennessean William Eggleston (whose work is also featured in “One Life: Echoes of Elvis”), has often memorialized Elvis in his art.

In this image, he arms Elvis with his trademark flashy apparel and accompanying guitar, but a slightly closer observation will yield several other components of Elvis’s iconographic ensemble—the lip curl, the slick, combed-back hair, the omnipresent Cadillac, Graceland, and the stylized stage posture. One of the famous gates of Graceland is swung open behind the entertainer while a woman in a red dress and black high heels observes the singer from the porch of the mansion.

Red Grooms is to American art as Mark Twain is to American writing; he is the foremost humorist in his discipline. He is also a prolific artist who works in many media.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is tomorrow (April 8), when curator Ann Shumard speaks about Lena Horne. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

April 07, 2010

American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein was a high priestess of early-twentieth-century modernism for the many who visited her fabled Paris apartment. She collected and promoted the art of the avant-garde, including that of Picasso and Matisse, and her own abstract, repetitive prose inspired the experiments of playwrights, composers, poets, and painters.

“There was an eternal quality about her,” sculptor Jo Davidson wrote. “She somehow symbolized wisdom.” He chose to depict her here as “a sort of modern Buddha.” Delighted by the sculpture, Stein composed one of her famous prose portraits of Davidson, later published in Vanity Fair alongside a photograph of this work.

Wendy Wick Reaves, curator at the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed Gertrude Stein and her portrait by Jo Davidson. The sculpture is on view at the National Portrait Gallery in the exhibition “Twentieth-Century Americans” on the museum’s third floor.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is tomorrow (April 8), when Warren Perry, writer and researcher at NPG, speaks about Elvis Presley. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

March 25, 2010

With the 1961 publication of her groundbreaking cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking(co-authored with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle), Julia Child launched a highly successful effort to demystify French cuisine by enabling American cooks “to create French dishes in American kitchens with American foods.”

Mastering the Art of French Cooking sold more than 100,000 copies in its first year and also provided the springboard to Child's improbable career in television. In February 1962, just four months after her cookbook's release, Child appeared on a local interview program on WGBH in Boston and matter-of-factly prepared a mushroom omelet. Viewers were enchanted, and letters poured in asking for more opportunities to see Child in action. The result was the debut on July 26, 1962, of The French Chef—the half-hour cooking show on public television that would make Julia Child a household name and a culinary icon.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is tonight (March 25), when Wendy Wick Reaves, curator of prints and drawings at NPG, speaks about Gertrude Stein. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

March 19, 2010

On Friday, March 5, the National Portrait Gallery paid tribute to one of the United States’s greatest historical preservation advocates and public servants.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003) was a member of four successive presidential administrations: those of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Gerald R. Ford. He was both ambassador to India and to the United Nations and later served four terms in the United States Senate, beginning in 1976. The late senator was a dedicated and frequent visitor to the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum. He was also passionate about the Penn Quarter revitalization.

Acting NPG Director Brandon Fortune stated, "Daniel Patrick Moynihan brought all of the strength of his intellect, his instinct for architectural excellence, and his love for history to bear on the redevelopment of the Penn Quarter area of Washington, D.C.—just one example of where these talents were put to use. We are thrilled to have his efforts in the realm of urban planning and historic preservation celebrated through the recent Daniel Patrick Moynihan lecture and panel. "

The late senator was truly an American rags-to-riches story, having been raised in New York in an impoverished home but rising to the highest echelons of world politics. Daniel Patrick Moynihan served in the United States navy; he later attended Tufts University, eventually receiving a Ph.D. in sociology.

Introductions to the lecture were provided by Fortune and Smithsonian Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture Richard Kurin. Four friends and colleagues of Senator Moynihan spoke of his commitment to the arts, architecture, and historical preservation: architect David Childs, former Metropolitan Museum vice president Ashton Hawkins, current president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Richard Moe, and Public Buildings Service Commissioner Robert Peck.

The National Portrait Gallery’s newest exhibition, “Glimpse of the Past: A Neighborhood Evolves,” is a visual exploration of the neighborhood surrounding one of the oldest federal buildings in Washington, D.C. The exhibition features images from the 1850s to the present and shows the rise, decline, and revival of the area. The area now known as Penn Quarter was of interest to Moynihan early on, and he chose to reside here before the neighborhood was teeming with its current activity.

March 15, 2010

Screen legend Katharine Hepburn fashioned herself into a cultural icon by sheer will and a shrewd business sense. She won the first of her record four Best Actress Oscars in 1933 for Morning Glory and made several popular films in the mid-1930s. But her subsequent choices like Christopher Strong and Sylvia Scarlett baffled her audience, and by 1938 she was branded “box office poison.” Even such screwball comedies as Bringing Up Baby (1938) failed to renew her popularity, and it wasn't until The Philadelphia Story (1940) that she was back on top.

Hepburn partnered in nine films with Spencer Tracy, winning an Oscar for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. She also won Oscars for The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond. She received a Kennedy Center Honors award in 1990.

In 2009, the National Portrait Gallery acquired Hepburn’s four Oscar statuettes as a gift from the Katharine Hepburn estate. They are now on view in the “Twentieth-Century Americans” gallery on the museum’s third floor, next to a 1982 portrait of Hepburn by artist Everett Raymond Kinstler, which she termed her “favorite.”

Amy Henderson, historian at the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed Hepburn’s Oscars and her portrait by Ray Kinstler.

Learn more about Hepburn by visiting the online exhibition for "KATE: A Centennial Celebration.” This exhibition was on view at the National Portrait Gallery from November 2, 2007, to September 28, 2008.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is March 18, when Rayna Green, curator at the National Museum of American History, speaks about Julia Child. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

March 10, 2010

Art critic and public intellectual Clement Greenberg was one of the most important advocates for American abstract painting after World War II. Championing such artists as Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, and especially Jackson Pollock, Greenberg provided the art-historical background to what he called "abstract expressionism."

Pugnacious and driven by a sense of cultural mission, Greenberg, in his criticism and in articles like "'American Type' Painting" (1955), became the model of the engaged intellectual, making as many enemies as he did friends. As he said, "The first obligation of an art critic is to deliver value judgments."

The art world eventually turned on Greenberg, but his four volumes of collected writings are an unmatched survey of American art and culture in the mid-twentieth century. René Bouché's 1955 portrait of Greenberg was praised as an abstraction "softening the edges of representation."

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is tomorrow (March 11), when Amy Henderson, historian at NPG, speaks about Katharine Hepburn and her four Oscars. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

March 03, 2010

Thurgood Marshall played a major role in the 1940s and 1950s as a leader in the struggle to end racial discrimination in the United States. From 1938 to 1961, he served as chief staff lawyer for the NAACP. Marshall devoted much effort to tailoring arguments that led the Supreme Court to its unanimous 1954 Brown v. the Board of Education of the City of Topeka decision, which ruled segregation of public schools by race to be unconstitutional. But he realized that the struggle was not over.

At a party celebrating the Brown decision, Marshall warned his colleagues, “I don’t want any of you to fool yourselves, it's just begun; the fight has just begun.” He went on to become the first African American Supreme Court justice, nominated by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is Thursday, March 4, when David Ward, historian at the National Portrait Gallery, speaks about art critic Clement Greenberg. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

February 25, 2010

In the face of racial hatred, segregation, and disenfranchisement following the Civil War, it was unrealistic, Booker T. Washington contended, to expect African Americans to gain entry into America’s white-collar professions. Instead, he suggested they establish themselves as a skilled and indispensable laboring class. With that accomplished, racial discrimination would gradually disappear.

In 1881 Washington put this theory to the test, becoming the director of the newly created Negro Normal School in Tuskegee, Alabama. As the school grew, Washington became viewed as the nation’s leading spokesman for African Americans. Yet by the century’s end, many critics began to challenge his “get along” philosophy.

Jim Barber, historian at the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed this bronze bust of Booker T. Washington by Richmond Barthé at a Face-to-Face portrait talk. The work is displayed on the museum’s first floor, in the exhibition “American Origins.”

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is tonight (February 25), when L. Michael Seidman, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, speaks about Justice Thurgood Marshall. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

February 19, 2010

Frederick Douglass became the first nationally known African American in United States history by turning his life into a testimony on the evils of slavery and the redemptive power of freedom. He had escaped from slavery in 1838 and subsequently became a powerful witness for abolitionism, speaking, writing, and organizing on behalf of the movement; he also founded a newspaper, the North Star.

Douglass’s charisma derived from his ability to present himself as the author of his own destiny at a time when white America could barely conceive of the black man as a thinking and feeling human being. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is not only a gripping nonfiction account of one man’s struggle for freedom; it is also one of the greatest American autobiographies. This powerful portrait shows Douglass as he grew in prominence during the 1840s.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is this Thursday, February 25, when L. Michael Seidman, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, speaks about Justice Thurgood Marshall. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

January 22, 2010

Elvis’s performance career lasted slightly under twenty-three years. After his death on August 16, 1977, writer and Elvis biographer Bobbie Ann Mason said, “It seemed inconceivable that Elvis—just forty-two years old—was gone.” Although Elvis left the world behind on that day, the world refused to let go of Elvis.

Within hours after his death, Elvis’s picture flashed across all forms of media. The shock wave was absorbed by a stunned public that soon found itself in sympathy with the young man from Tupelo, Mississippi, who had made the journey from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to notoriety, and from fame to icon.

The post-Elvis fascination first manifested itself in the form of sympathetic and not-so-sympathetic biographies. Since 1977 the canon of printed literature invoking the name of Elvis has grown larger yearly, including scholarly contributions like Erika Doss’s Elvis Culture (1999), philosophical works such as David Rosen’s The Tao of Elvis (2002), and a surfeit of non-academic books like Brenda Butler’s Are You Hungry Tonight? (1992). Films about Elvis appeared as early as 1979 (Elvis: The Movie), and later films such as the haunting Mystery Train (1989) and the conspiratorial Bubbahotep (2002) feature dark and fantastic Elvis portrayals.

The world of visual art also became a repository for images of Elvis after his death—tributary, allegorical, and satirical. Today, Elvis is the subject of works by artists from every part of the earth and in every form and medium possible. His face is no longer the face of the man who sang, danced, and played the good guy on the silver screen; rather, it is the face of an icon whose metamorphic character echoes the views and passions of the artists who portray him.

Elvis as Caesar is Robert Arneson’s variation on Elvis as King of Rock and Roll. Arneson’s monumental ceramic encomium is a sly tribute to Elvis’s place at the pinnacle of twentieth-century entertainment. Satire, caricature, and exaggeration are all part of Arneson’s portraiture. His early work as a cartoonist is evident in his irreverent ceramic sculptures; they are often visual puns full of political and social commentary. Arneson deliberately pushed artistic boundaries by rejecting traditional decorative or functional work in clay to create boldly expressive sculptures that could shock and amuse his audiences.

Robert Arneson received his MFA from Mills College in 1958 and taught at the University of California at Davis from 1962 until just before his death in 1992.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, January 28, when Denise Wamaling of the Smithsonian American Art Museum speaks about the portrait Elvis Presley by William Eggleston. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Although Sarah, David was not place-winning, it was highlighted as a commended piece. In her artist statement, Yolanda del Amo writes:

Sarah came to visit me in my studio one day and she was carrying some folded boxes under her arm. I asked her what they were for, and she told me that she was moving out of her place, and also ending her marriage. This triggered a long, cathartic and very personal conversation about relationships and our shared experiences. It set the foundation of our friendship, and also the inspiration for the photograph Sarah, David. This piece is part of the body of work entitled Archipelago (2004–in progress), in which I explore relationships and their boundaries. My work focuses on what happens between the represented figures, and it understands the physical spaces where such interactions take place as a psychological extension of the characters.

Carolyn Carr, deputy director of the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed Sarah, David and the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, at a Face-to-Face portrait talk.

One exhibiting artist will win the People’s Choice Award, in which visitors to the exhibition, both online and in the gallery, may vote for their favorite of the forty-nine finalists. You can cast your vote here. Voting will close on January 18, 2010.

December 08, 2009

After going bankrupt in 1858 owing to a failed attempt to control a commodities market in San Francisco, Joshua A. Norton proclaimed himself “His Imperial Majesty Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.”

Despite having lost his mental equilibrium, Norton enjoyed a twenty-two-year “reign,” during which he used his celebrity status to trumpet San Francisco’s virtues and to recommend improvements. Local newspapers published his “decrees,” which included a proposal—far-fetched in its day—to build a suspension bridge between Oakland and San Francisco, thus connecting the East Bay to the city.

As this photograph shows, Norton often wore a navy commodore’s costume and a silk hat with feathers. Period publications described Norton as “the gentlest, most inoffensive, and most agreeable monomaniac that ever lived.” It was reported that thirty thousand people attended his funeral, a testament to his extraordinary popularity.

December 01, 2009

A confectioner from Italy, Domingo Ghirardelli established himself as a chocolate merchant in Lima, Peru, before immigrating to California in 1849. Unsuccessful as a miner, Ghirardelli returned to the confectioner’s trade shortly thereafter, opening his first shop in Stockton, California.

Ghirardelli’s business selling chocolate, coffee, and dried fruit was profitable, leading him to open a second store in San Francisco. Although a fire destroyed this establishment in 1851, he rebuilt. Ghirardelli was one of only two chocolate manufacturers in the United States before the Civil War, and his product dominated the western market. By the 1880s he was importing more than 450,000 pounds of cocoa beans a year.

The photographer of this carte-de-visite portrait was George H. Johnson, who—like Ghirardelli—relocated to California during the gold rush. He also failed as a prospector, but earned a reputation for opening one of the first photography studios in San Francisco.

October 07, 2009

“I have tried to get from my Great Father what is right and just,” exclaimed Red Cloud to government officials at the conclusion of his first trip to the East in 1870. Two years earlier, the celebrated Lakota leader had forced U.S. authorities to abandon a series of newly constructed forts meant to protect settlers moving across traditional Native lands.

Beginning in 1870, however, Red Cloud would choose diplomacy, not warfare, to protect the Lakota’s land base and to ensure the tribe’s political and cultural independence. Although the westward migration of American settlers would continue largely unabated, Red Cloud remained dedicated to the future welfare of the Lakota, meeting with five different U.S. presidents over a period of thirty years.

Washington photographer Charles M. Bell seated Red Cloud next to a papier-mâché rock and a painted seascape backdrop for this portrait, taken during one of the Lakota leader’s many trips to the nation’s capital.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, October 8, when NPG’s Maya Foo speaks about Joshua A. Norton. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

September 04, 2009

The most brilliant scientist of the twentieth century, physicist Albert Einstein inspires comparisons to Isaac Newton. By the time he reached thirty, his theory of relativity and work in quantum mechanics had revolutionized physics and profoundly altered our perception of the world.

Einstein naturally commanded great prestige in the United States when he sought refuge from the Nazi regime of his native Germany in 1933. His words thus carried enormous weight in 1939 when he wrote a letter alerting President Roosevelt that Germany was moving toward the development of nuclear weaponry. Eventually, that warning gave impetus to the Manhattan Project, the top-secret venture that in 1945 produced the world's first atomic bomb.

While sitting for this likeness in 1944, Einstein mused to his portraitist, "After fifty years they will say of me, either he was a great man or a fool!"

David Ward, historian at the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed Albert Einstein at a Face-to-Face portrait talk. This 1944 portrait is on view at the National Portrait Gallery, in the exhibition “Twentieth Century Americans” on the museum’s third floor.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, September 10, when Liz Rideal of London's National Portrait Gallery speaks about John Singleton Copley's self-portrait. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

July 28, 2009

Ray Beldner makes art from the stuff of everyday life. His works can be found in public and private collections, including the Federal Reserve Board, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and here at the National Portrait Gallery.

Two of Ray Beldner’s works, Avec Ma Langue Dans Ma Joue, or With My Language in My Game, and Duchamp Tout Fait are on display as part of the museum's exhibition “Inventing Marcel Duchamp: The Dynamics of Portraiture.” This exhibition showcases approximately 100 never-before-assembled portraits and self-portraits of Marcel Duchamp ranging from 1912 to the present, including works by his contemporaries Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Francis Picabia, and Florine Stettheimer, as well as portraits by a more recent generation of artists, such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Sturtevant, Yasumasa Morimura, David Hammons, Beatrice Wood, Douglas Gordon, and Ray Beldner. See the exhibition while you can; its last day is this Sunday, August 2.

Avec Ma Langue Dans Ma Joue, or With My Language in My Game

Ray Beldner’s work, part of a larger series based on Duchamp’s small sculptural pieces, was inspired by Duchamp’s With My Tongue in My Cheek (1959), which combines a plaster cast of Duchamp’s cheek with a pencil-drawn sketch of his profile.

Here Beldner has substituted his own image. The plaster cast of his cheek is flocked with ground money dust, with the result that the work, as Beldner jokes, looks like a “moldy” version of the original. The use of money dust references Duchamp’s ambivalent relationship to the art market, while Beldner’s remark about mold brings to mind Duchamp’s belief that works of art lose their importance, or become “stale,” over time.

Beldner’s translation of Duchamp’s English title plays on the multiple meanings of the French words langue and joue, paying tribute to Duchamp’s love of manipulating language.

Duchamp Tout Fait

In this composite image, Ray Beldner used digital technology to bring together twenty-six well-known images of Marcel Duchamp. By compiling images from throughout Duchamp’s life, Beldner effectively collapses time and merges Duchamp’s various identities into one compositional space.

As Beldner notes: “It’s a subtle photo, but if given enough time to reflect on it, one can discern many likenesses—from Rrose Sélavy to the artist at rest in front of his chessboard.” The title references Duchamp’s readymades—the everyday objects, such as a bottle rack and a urinal—that he designated as works of art. The commonly used French phrase “tout fait” roughly translates to “ready made.” By pairing the artist’s name with this phrase, or with Beldner’s construction of him, Duchamp himself becomes the “readymade” for this work of art.

July 08, 2009

George Washington, appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental army, took command of a ragtag force of some 17,000 men in July 1775. He kept an army together for the next eight-and-a-half years—losing more battles than he won—but effectively ended the war with his victory at Yorktown in October 1781.

Mission accomplished, Washington—a hero who could have been king—resigned his military commission before Congress on December 23, 1783, and retired to Mount Vernon. Here, the man all artists yearned to portray posed in his uniform for English artist Robert Edge Pine. He wryly observed, "I am so hackneyed to the touches of the Painter's pencil, that I am now altogether at their beck, and sit like patience on a Monument."

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is Thursday, July 9, when museum director Martin Sullivan speaks about Margaret Sanger. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

June 15, 2009

Originally created in 1923, Duchamp’s Wanted: $2,000 Reward was the last work of art he completed before leaving New York that year to return to Paris. Duchamp based the work on a joke notice designed for tourists that he found in a New York restaurant. He pasted two head shots of himself on the poster and had a printer add another alias to those already listed: that of his recently created alter ego Rrose Sélavy.

Although Wanted challenges traditional conceptions of the creative process, the work, which Duchamp re-created at key moments in his career, also played a significant role in the construction of his artistic identity. This version, based on the now-lost original, is a replica intended for Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise, a portable museum of his work.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, June 18, when guest curator James McManus speaks about the portrait of Marcel Duchamp by Brian O’Doherty, on view in the exhibition “Inventing Marcel Duchamp.” The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

June 10, 2009

Isabel Bishop chose her subject matter from the New York street life that flowed through Union Square, beneath her studio window. Although she moved to the Bronx after her marriage, Bishop continued to travel almost daily to her studio to observe and sketch laborers, shopgirls, children, and unemployed men. While Bishop’s art focused on the urban street life, there were two moments—in her youth and old age—when self-portraiture played an important role.

As a young woman in the late 1920s, she found herself a convenient subject, noting that self-portraiture may serve just “to provide oneself a model, especially handy for a young artist as a means for studying picture problems.” In this etching (top), her concerns are formal: structure, form, gesture, and the play of light on a tilted, slightly turned face. The detachment, unreadable expression, and elegant geometry of the head all disguise personality. Even her hand, resting too lightly to support her head, seems merely part of a pose she wished to explore.

After a long, successful career, Bishop returned to self-portraiture when failing health forced her to give up her beloved studio. In a series of unsparing self-appraisals, she conveyed the anguish of her physical limitations. Nonetheless, she continued to challenge herself. Turning away from “mobility” to the depiction of motion itself, she noted, "I found I was much less interested in the genre aspect of the picture, in particularity." In the older drawing (left), one senses the actual rotation of the head. That immediacy, ironically, does not convey the specific individual or precise moment but instead the sense of a timeless, universal truth.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, June 11, when research assistant Jennifer Quick, speaks about the “Wanted” poster from the Boite—Series D by Marcel Duchamp, on view in the exhibition “Inventing Marcel Duchamp.” The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate
gallery.

June 03, 2009

A tenacious competitor with an impressive work ethic, Carlton Fisk was one of major league baseball’s most capable and durable catchers. During twenty-four seasons in the American League (first with the Boston Red Sox and later with the Chicago White Sox), Fisk caught a record-setting 2,226 games and posted home-run tallies that ranked him among the top-hitting catchers of all time.

Fisk’s accomplishments were all the more remarkable because he repeatedly overcame career-threatening injuries. In 1975, after battling back from reconstructive knee surgery and a broken arm, Fisk gave Red Sox fans a never-to-be-forgotten thrill in the sixth game of the World Series when he drilled a twelfth-inning home run to win the game. Fisk always demanded the best, not only of himself but of his teammates. As he once observed, "You don’t play baseball. . . . You work at it." More about Carlton Fisk is available in this previous blog post.

In two series of paintings, Inside Outside and Looking At Exceptional Men the oil painter, Susan Miller-Havens painted over 100 pieces related to athletes that have been shown publicly and are owned by sport enthusiasts and art collectors through out the United States. She views sports as a metaphor for life. She has written, "All team sports reflect what it is like to be a human being: hoping for success, sometimes getting it, failing, picking oneself up, trying again to be the best..all the while striving to be part of a team. Like life, sports are both simple and complex."

Miller-Havens chose to focus on baseball and basketball because they are known to her and appeared to be in an interesting contrast to one another. In 2000 she wrote, "Basketball is a war with battle plans played on an enclosed court. The action is highly regulated by a complex fouling system that controls the power and veracity of the game. In contrast I subscribe to former Commissioner of Baseball, Bart Giamatti's way of thinking about baseball. It is really a story of coming home, not combat. Played in a large park the confrontation between teams is given more space. Giamatti compared it to Odysseus's task of conquering a variety of obstacles in order to get home. Scoring requires getting to home plate. In baseball the player may hit the ball, get to base or not. LIke Odysseus, the Sirens and the Greek gods of weather must be dealt with by the player before he can get home. In basketball players are positioned and must execute the diagramed plan as a group moving together to enable the basket to be scored."

May 28, 2009

In 1955, with only seven years of seniority, Johnson was elected Senate majority leader. Through his successful courting of the “old bulls” of the “southern caucus,” particularly Richard Russell of Georgia, Johnson controlled the agenda of the Senate as no majority leader has before or since.

Another element of his mastery was the “Johnson treatment,” as displayed here with Senator Theodore Green of Rhode Island. Newspaper columnist Mary McGrory described it as “an incredible, potent mixture of persuasion, badgering, flattery, threats, reminders of past favors and future advantages”; Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee recalled feeling that “a St. Bernard had licked your face for an hour, [and] had pawed you all over”; and Hubert Humphrey described it as a “tidal wave.” Johnson’s most notable victory as majority leader was the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the first such legislation since Reconstruction.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is tonight (Thursday, May 28), when biographer Irwin Gellman discusses Richard Nixon. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

May 14, 2009

In 1791 Charles Willson Peale added this portrait of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to his museum's collection of American heroes. Jefferson appears younger than his fifty years, perhaps evoking the young man the artist remembered as the Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress. Jefferson was well known to Americans in 1791, having also served as governor of Virginia and ambassador to France.

Notwithstanding George Washington's desire for unity in his administration, Jefferson quickly found himself at odds with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, whose power and influence on the president rivaled his own. Jefferson favored a smaller, weaker national government, with more power residing in the states and closer ties to France; Hamilton argued for a powerful national government allied to Great Britain. From these differences the first American party system—Democratic-Republicans (Jefferson) versus Federalists (Hamilton)—was born.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next Face-to-Face talk is tonight (Thursday, May 14), when NPG historian Jim Barber speaks about Andrew Johnson. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

May 04, 2009

When ex-California governor Ronald Reagan began his presidency in 1981, his warmth and skill in handling the media had already planted the seeds of his reputation as the "great communicator."

More significant, however, was how those traits were made to work on behalf of his conservative agenda. By the end of his second term, despite widespread concern over budget deficits and several administration scandals, Reagan's presidency had wrought many significant changes.

Under his leadership, the nation had undergone major tax reforms, witnessed a significantly firmer American stance toward the Communist world, and experienced a sharp upturn in prosperity. Reagan left office enjoying a popularity that only a few of his outgoing predecessors had ever experienced.

This 1989 portrait of Ronald Reagan by Nelson Shanks is on view in the “America’s Presidents” exhibition at National Portrait Gallery, on the museum's first floor. Sid Hart, senior historian at the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed the painting at a Face-to-Face portrait talk.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. Sid Hart speaks again at the next Face-to-Face talk, on Thursday, May 7. He will discuss the portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Charles Wilson Peale, on view in the exhibition “Presidents in Waiting.” The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.